I think perhaps a public education course—as much for EAs themselves as for everyone else—that while the ends do sometimes justify the means, they often don’t, and when using extremely dodgy means you have to be unbelievably confident that your ends are worth it and that no other means will do. In short, I think EA should come to firmly reject the philosophy of the street mugger—that he (we) is justified in taking other people’s money just because he (we) thinks or even knows that he (we) can do better things with the money than the people in question. People have rights and we shouldn’t steal from them, and honesty, decency, civility are all very important things. AI risk or pandemic prevention of course might be important too, but it’s not necessarily more important than maintaining basic societal norms like “don’t steal”. In short, EA’s chronic and severe epistemic overconfidence problem should be publicly addressed.
I think perhaps a public education course—as much for EAs themselves as for everyone else—that while the ends do sometimes justify the means, they often don’t, and when using extremely dodgy means you have to be unbelievably confident that your ends are worth it and that no other means will do. In short, I think EA should come to firmly reject the philosophy of the street mugger—that he (we) is justified in taking other people’s money just because he (we) thinks or even knows that he (we) can do better things with the money than the people in question. People have rights and we shouldn’t steal from them, and honesty, decency, civility are all very important things. AI risk or pandemic prevention of course might be important too, but it’s not necessarily more important than maintaining basic societal norms like “don’t steal”. In short, EA’s chronic and severe epistemic overconfidence problem should be publicly addressed.
A compliance training for EAs?